How Kevin Schulz won $10K for an event that never ran

Stab didn’t get to run their Freak Peak comp due to a wild storm. But they still awarded lanky goofy foot Kevin Schulz $10k for an air he pulled during the warm up session.

Designed by Perfect Swell (the people at American Wave Machines), The ‘Freak Peak’ is a relatively new addition to Waco’s wave repertoire. What sets this wave apart from almost any else in the wave pool arms race, is that it’s designed not to mimic the ocean. It’s a peculiar wedge designed to send the incoming surfer as high as possible. It might not resemble any normal wave out there in the real (salt-water) world, but it’s a fun man-made novelty nonetheless.

Initially, we were planning to run a one-wave, choose your direction, Freak Peak contest at the conclusion of Stab High, but a late afternoon storm put a quick stop to our hopes of that allowing us to quickly descend into debauchery. That however didn’t mean that we were going to skimp out on the $10k we’d promised to the biggest air landed on the Freak Peak.

On the practice day, we let the competitors have a few cracks at the peak. Most had a dig, but there was one true standout – Kevin Schulz and the flip he so casually stomped. An air which had Sam Moody dropping profanities behind the lens and even astonished Kevin himself as he cruised into the flats.

As is the norm in the content-hungry age, we posted it straight to Instagram, and it quickly garnered nearly half a million views and over a thousand comments; most of which were either telling us to just give Kev the $10k already or back-up our claim that it is the biggest air landed in Waco’s brief history.

We ran the main event on Waco’s ‘standard’ air section – which Noa Deane still described as the easiest ramp in the world – just due to the sheer difficulty in landing an air off the Freak Peak. In saying that we’re damn glad we turned to dial, if only for a few minutes, in the warm up which allowed Kevin to do this and us to ogle over it.